


Moving into Memory Lane

by A_Lily_In_The_Moonlight



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, Grief/Mourning, Melancholy, Nostalgia, Potter Manor, Romance, Wartime Jily
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-05
Updated: 2016-10-05
Packaged: 2018-08-19 18:25:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,380
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8220605
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/A_Lily_In_The_Moonlight/pseuds/A_Lily_In_The_Moonlight
Summary: It is time for Lily and James to get into hiding, as there is a chance the prophecy describes their unborn child. They move into the Potter Manor, entering it for the first time since Fleamont and Euphemia died...





	

**Author's Note:**

> Comments and (constructive) criticism are super welcome! English isn't my first language so it's likely I've made a few mistakes. Don't hesitate to point them out, I'll correct them asap.
> 
> Thank you for your time and enjoy!

They Apparated just outside the gate.

Lily’s breath was short as she put a hand to her stomach, and James took the other one without thinking, holding it tight as he watched the lonely two-story cottage in front of them. The grass around the path that led to the door was overgrown, and weed surrounded the flower bushes on either side of the front yard. The metal gate was rusted, the protecting Charm having passed away along with its caster, and all the blinds were closed. It looked like a dead version of the house he’d once known.

“You’re being gloomy,” Lily said, and he shook himself out of it.

“Ta-da! Welcome home.”

“It's... well. We’ll make it pretty again.”

“’Pretty’?” James scoffed. “My house isn’t ‘pretty’. It’s devastatingly handsome.”

“I think you have it confused with me.”

“That’s my line!”

He shook his head and opened the gate. It creaked appropriately, matching the atmosphere, and he cleared the path of the dead leaves covering it with a flick of his wand, showing the way without letting go of his wife’s hand. The walls grew and expanded as they walked up to the door, and soon the familiar shape of the Manor towered over them.

“Still creeping me out,” Lily said.

“What is?”

“The way it just changes and looms over us. And how it still doesn’t look as big as it is on the inside.”

“Well, that’s because of the Expansion Charms…”

“Yes, thank you, Potter, I’m not stupid.”

“Aren’t you though?”

She elbowed him and received a grin for her efforts, before he got himself to turn the handle. The door opened without creaking, and they both blinked as a blinding light came on and a Panihari song started echoing in the corridor - a ghost of his mother’s voice that he shut down with a hastily casted Silencio.

“Merlin,” he gasped, trying his best not to step back.

It was stupid, really, he should have expected it. The Manor had always liked welcoming its owners with music, and it had taken a distinct liking to Rajasthani traditional rhythms from the moment his mother had moved in. When Fleamont told that story, he always seemed mildly surprised and impressed; in his childhood – or so he said – the Manor had been too posh to ever consider playing anything but classical music. (Euphemia then scoffed asked him what he meant by “classical” and Fleamont answered with “old”. It earned him a smack across the head and a laugh. “If you had paid attention during your music classes and learnt to respect it,” she said, “maybe the Manor would agree to play something you like from time to time.” But it was no use. Fleamont Potter was as clueless about music as James was about Potions, and Euphemia had taken charge of her son’s artistic education before her husband could do any damage.)

“James,” Lily said quietly, and he blinked again, dispelling his mother’s laugh from his mind and taking in the silent, dusty hallway.

“Sorry,” he said, both to her and the Manor. Some part of him worried the building would start playing the Beatles instead of his mother’s traditional songs as soon as Lily crossed the threshold, but he shooed the thought away and entered his family home decidedly. One hand in his and the other still on her belly, his wife followed in.

In the end, it was Lily who guided him through the hallway and into the ballroom. The floorboards were covered in dust and slightly bumpy; four years of humidity had affected the woodwork. The Manor was now silent, and he cringed at its state of abandonment. It had been left alone and empty for four whole years. The magical windows, usually showing a cloudless, starry night at this hour of the evening, were now fogged with condensation; slightly darker patches on the white ceiling indicated water damage... and given how lumpy the curtains looked, he would need to ask Lily to prepare Doxycide as soon as possible.

 _I’m sorry_ , he thought desperately, at no-one in particular. _I’m sorry._

“Come on,” Lily said, and she pulled on his hand, breaking the spell. They passed in front of the fireplace – he was now too tall to get in without bending, he noticed, and up the first flight of stairs. He steeled himself but his parents’ portraits had the decency to stay as still and silent as they had been up until their subjects' deaths. His ancestors' whispers did accompany them up to the third floor, but that was nothing he wasn’t used to and he could close his ears to their comments. He and Lily were gonna need to get their portraits done too now, he mused. But that wouldn’t happen until after the end of the war.

Lily led him to the only bedroom she knew, his own, and once again he had to stop on the doorstep. There were no signs of pests, fortunately. The room was exactly as he had left it, the bed unmade, his quilt rolled up in the corner where Sirius had held him tight as he wept, the wardrobe doors open, half of the shelves occupied by the clothes he hadn’t bothered to take, the library completely empty – the books were in the Shrunk trunk in his pocket – and glass shards still covered the floor under the wall where the last of his dad’s medication flasks had landed, useless. There was a stain on the carpet.

“Not here,” he said, his throat tight. He turned his back to the red four-poster bed and its golden embroideries, the moving drawings on the walls, the Quaffle from the first match his team had won – he and Peter had nicked it from Madam Hooch’s locker back in third year. Sirius had gotten detention for it: he'd been standing guard and they hadn't been able to reach him in time to shield him from Filch. Not that it would have mattered anyway - the Invisibility Cloak was no-where near broad enough to hide three growing teenagers.

He passed Sirius’ bedroom door, the second guest room, the guest bathroom, his parents’ master suite, his grandparents’ master suite – both sealed off since their death – and finally, the one that had never been occupied as long as he remembered. It used to be his great-grandparents’, who he had never met, and had only been opened – and cleaned of the vermin that had infested it in almost a century of being left to thrive – when he and Lily had gotten married.

“Ta-da,” he said again.

“ _Scourgify_ ,” Lily answered, scrunching her nose as the dust vanished. “It’s… old-fashioned. Jesus, there’s a lot of cleaning up to do around here, isn’t there?”

“We _are_ gonna have a lot of time on our hands.”

“Don’t remind me,” Lily sighed. “Can I opt out? I’m too pregnant to do all of this physical work.”

She let herself fall down dramatically on the bed and squealed when a swarm of Bundimun jumped from the bedding and into the carpet.

“ _Scourgify!_ ” she repeated quickly, directing her wand everywhere in the room. “ _Scourgify!_ ” Green smoke puffed out as the fungus was vanished, and the mouldy smell disappeared along with it.

     “You’re five months pregnant and were insisting to keep going into battle just a week ago,” James retorted, as if nothing had happened. “But if you want to sit on your arse for four more months and bore yourself to death, be my guest.”

“I can already feel it draining on my magic when I Apparate," she complained. "Can’t I just obliterate the vermin while you do all the dirty work?”

“Nope.”

“You’re so unfair. I’m making a human being in my belly!”

“Actually,” James corrected. “A human being is making itself in your belly, using your blood and nutrients and magic and energy.”

“Now you’re just making my point.”

”You know, I always wondered – if I had unprotected sex with a guy while Polyjuiced into a woman, could I get pregnant, and what would happen when I changed back into myself?

“Are you saying you want to bear our next child, James Potter?”

“There will be a next?” James beamed.

“Only if this one looks like you. I don’t want to be outnumbered by unattractive dorks.”


End file.
